In general, IP (Internet Protocol) phones enable communications via voice signals that are encoded and transmitted as data packets over an IP network. IP phones simply put data packets onto the network. They have no control over the path the packets take on the network to a target destination such as another IP phone. IP networks are inherently stateless so IP phones typically rely on the traditional static link-cost of Djikstra values to determine a shortest path to a destination phone. Conventional methods presume that establishing a shortest path between two IP phones provides sufficient bandwidth and link quality so that respective callers can communicate with each other without annoying delays or dropped portions of a conversation.